Townie_ A Memoir Part 15

TREVOR D. promoted me from laborer to carpenter's helper and he b.u.mped my pay to five dollars an hour. Instead of hauling debris and fresh lumber and tools all day with Randy, I got to wear a tape measure on my belt and stick a pencil behind my ear. I was made the cut man for all the part.i.tion walls they were building.

It was a cold dry week, the sun heavy and bright in a deep sky, and first thing every morning I set up my cut station in the parking lot down below. I took three eight-foot two-by-fours, set them across two saw-horses, then laid a full sheet of plywood over them and carried over the chop saw and unrolled a cord and plugged it in.

"Hey, Ratchet. Ratchet." Doug called down from the second-story window. He stood in the naked wood frame, a big grin on his face. He always wore a dark wool sailor's cap down around his ears, and in the early morning sun I could see the sawdust in it. "Here's your list." He tossed a foot-long section of two-by-six out into the air and Randy ran and caught it over his shoulder, but Doug was already inside, and I said, "Nice catch, Randy."

"Nice list, Ratchet."

They'd been calling me that ever since Doug and I went up to the new flat roof and started lagging the perimeter joists to four-by-four posts in the corners. We each had a ratchet wrench, something I'd never used before. Doug was on the east side of the frame, I was on the west, and I could hear him cranking the galvanized lag bolts into wood, the clickety-clickety-click clickety-clickety-click his ratchet made, but I couldn't figure out how he could work his hand so fast; once I pushed the lag bolt into its predrilled hole and set the ratchet head on its end, I could crank it only half a turn before the ratchet handle hit the perimeter joist, then I'd have to pull the ratchet head free and set it on the bolt for another half crank again and again. his ratchet made, but I couldn't figure out how he could work his hand so fast; once I pushed the lag bolt into its predrilled hole and set the ratchet head on its end, I could crank it only half a turn before the ratchet handle hit the perimeter joist, then I'd have to pull the ratchet head free and set it on the bolt for another half crank again and again.

Doug was on his third bolt while I was still on my first. He looked over at me. He stood and walked across the roof. "The f.u.c.k you doin'? That's a ratchet ratchet wrench." He squatted and cranked the ratchet back and forth, the lag bolt sinking all the way into the wood without his once having to pull it away and reset it on the head of the lag. "See, numb-nuts. It f.u.c.kin' wrench." He squatted and cranked the ratchet back and forth, the lag bolt sinking all the way into the wood without his once having to pull it away and reset it on the head of the lag. "See, numb-nuts. It f.u.c.kin' ratchets ratchets." He straightened up and laughed. "That's it, man. When we come to one of your fights, I'm calling you 'the Ratchet Kid.'" He laughed again and shook his head. "See what college did to you? Unf.u.c.kin' believable, the Ratchet Kid."

Jeb had told them I was boxing. The five of us were standing around the vending truck, sipping hot coffee, warming our hands on the Styrofoam cups. Jeb nodded in my direction and said, "Andre's a boxer." I could see the pride in my younger brother's eyes, and it surprised me; what seemed to move and impress him most were artistic pursuits-a perfectly executed painting, a flawlessly played fugue, anything that came from the rosewood guitar of Andres Segovia.

"Yeah," Trevor said, "but can you build a box box?"

The conversation turned to furniture-building, fine-finish work, but when coffee break was over, Doug tossed his cup into the dumpster and said, "We should all get s.h.i.+t-faced and go watch Andre fight."

We went back to the job, but it was like hearing they wanted to come watch me read political theory at night, this private thing I was doing to weigh who I was and where I should be going. And my first official fight wouldn't come until late winter anyway, the Golden Gloves down in Lowell, another milltown on the Merrimack River, the one Jack Kerouac had made famous. I'd been doing well enough in the ring that Tony Pavone handed me an application form, and a few days later I got my AAU number in the mail. At the Gloves you had to have it pinned to your s.h.i.+rt or trunks for each bout, and each one was single-elimination, a term I'd never heard before. Pavone was standing in the fluorescent light of his office doorway when he said it. Behind me the gym was crowded with fighters working out, the place smelling like sweat and mildew.

"What's that mean, Tony?"

"You know, like in playoffs. It means you can't lose. You do, and you're out."

Playoffs. Another word I barely knew. But I learned a Golden Gloves champion sometimes fought as many as ten fights in two days. And he had to win them all.

In the ring, even after an hour of shadowboxing and working on the heavy bags and now the speed bag I'd finally learned how to control, I kept coming out ahead. Not in a big way; I never knocked anyone down or out, and I was often too afraid of dropping my guard to plant my feet and throw combinations, so I jabbed and jabbed and jabbed. I never stopped jabbing. These years of consistent workouts hadn't put much muscle on me, but I had stamina. It's what seemed to come more naturally to me than power, and I felt as if I could throw jabs for hours, my opponent's eyes tearing up as I popped him in the forehead, the upper cheek, his nose and mouth.

Every few jabs I'd let go with a straight right or a cross, and I'd feel the itch to weave and step in close with an uppercut I could follow with a left hook to the ribs or ear, but I was worried about the rain of counterpunches from these fighters, some black, some white or Latino. Most of them were only eighteen or nineteen but had over a hundred fights behind them already. One black kid, an eighteen-year-old welterweight I'd sparred for three rounds, told me he'd been training with Tony Pavone since he was six.

Tony had big plans for him, said openly, "This kid's gonna be the welterweight champ at the Gloves. You watch."

Tony would sometimes match up fighters from different weight cla.s.ses. Bigger boxers could learn speed from the smaller ones. Small boxers learned how to evade. The night Tony put me in the ring with the welterweight, I felt sure it was to warm the kid up for a better, more experienced fighter after he was done with me.

The welterweight had a lean, muscled torso, his skin a burnished brown, and when Tony called "Time!," the kid and I tapped gloves in the center of the ring, and I chomped down on my mouthpiece and wished for headgear.

But I never let him get close to me. I jabbed him in the face for most of the three rounds. A few times he weaved away and got off a hook or a right, but his feet weren't set and his range was off so the punches only glanced my gloves. After three rounds, the kid ducked fast through the ropes and looked frustrated and I felt mildly proud of myself. Tony talked to him awhile in the light of his office. Two heavyweights stepped into the ring, and I ducked between the ropes and unlaced my gloves and started doing incline sit-ups, my feet hooked beneath an iron bar. After a while, Tony came over. "You're good with that jab but you gotta throw more combinations. You don't want to win on points, you want to fight. fight."

I nodded and thanked him. I knew he was right. I was was too careful in the ring, and I wasn't sure why, but his last word hung between my ears- too careful in the ring, and I wasn't sure why, but his last word hung between my ears-fight. Is that what I was supposed to be doing? Because a boxing match just did not feel like a real fight to me; something was missing from it, the way maybe love is missing from an act that then becomes f.u.c.king. Something was missing, but I wouldn't know what it was till later that winter close to dawn in a diner in Monument Square.

WE WERE all in a celebratory mood. Sam and Theresa were now officially engaged. They asked me to be best man, and the wedding was set for late August, just a few days before I'd be driving west to the University of Wisconsin at Madison and their Ph.D. program in Marxist social science. The letter had come in the mail just a few days before. That night Liz was happy too. She'd just written something she was proud of, and now she and Sam and Theresa and I were in her room, listening to music and telling stories and drinking beer and playing cards. After his s.h.i.+ft, Vinny T. came up and joined us, too. Vinny T. was the head of security at Bradford College. He was a short, small-boned ex-Marine with olive skin and a mat of curly black hair, his cheeks and jaw forever darkened by whiskers he kept shaved as close to the skin as possible. Vinny always had a good joke and liked to go drinking after his s.h.i.+ft. Partly because he'd been in the Marines, he and Pop hit it off and Vinny spent a lot of time at Pop's campus house, the two of them drinking till very late. Soon he was sitting on the couch very close to one of Liz's girlfriends who'd wandered in, his hand on her knee, his handsome Italian face just inches from hers as he told her a dirty joke and she laughed too hard and spilled her drink. There was the feeling that good things were happening, that life wasn't so directionless anymore and that hard work and focus could bring about something like Sam and Theresa getting married. I still wasn't sure why I was going back to school, but just knowing I was really going had lifted something off me.

Liz sat close to Theresa on the couch, the two of them laughing and looking like sisters with their brown hair and wool sweaters and tight jeans. Then it was after three in the morning and Liz's friend had wandered off and there was a plan to go to Vinny's house out on Lake Att.i.tash. He was going to cook the five of us omelets. Sam and Theresa wanted to get home, though, and I hugged them at the back door of Academy Hall, quiet now, the red-carpeted floor soft and gritty under our feet. I watched the two of them walk out to the parking lot holding hands, the light from a security lamp s.h.i.+ning dully on Sam's black Duster as they pulled away.

Vinny had some last-minute paperwork to get done so Liz and I and sat on the couch in Vinny's office. The only light came from a fluorescent desk lamp, and Vinny sat in it entering something into the s.h.i.+ft log, his eyes squinting, the slight static of the dispatch radio in the air. Liz was smoking a cigarette. The couch was wobbly but deep and maybe I dozed a few minutes. Maybe I didn't. But it was as if Sam and Theresa had never driven off because now they were hurrying through the back door, Theresa looking pale as she held the door for her fiance, his beard dripping blood.

DRIVING THERESA home to where she lived with her mother down in the avenues, Sam had slowed for the right he'd have to take at the corner of Fifth and Cedar, but there was a ma.s.sive oak tree at the corner, its roots having buckled the sidewalk long ago, and he had to edge up almost into Cedar Street and that's when a car shot in front of his hood, nearly clipping it. The car slowed immediately and Sam saw the flas.h.i.+ng blue light on the dashboard, an unmarked police car. It pulled over, and the cop was sitting there, Sam thought, studying him, the black Duster that almost hit him.

Instead of turning right for Sixth Avenue, Sam turned left and eased up behind the unmarked car. He was ready to explain himself, to explain the big oak he couldn't see around. Inside the car, the blue light was still flas.h.i.+ng, and Sam waited for the cop to step out first, but when he didn't, Sam did, and now the cop stepped out too, a young guy in a leather jacket and dark pants and motorcycle boots standing in the path of Sam's headlights. He had stringy black hair and he just stood there looking at Sam, then past him to the Duster. Maybe he could see Theresa, maybe he couldn't. Then the front and back pa.s.senger doors opened and three more guys climbed out, all of them in denim or leather jackets, and a white light rocked through Sam's head, his chin a numbing burn, the kid who'd just punched him standing there like it was Sam's move now.

"Yeah?" Sam jerked down the zipper of his jacket and yanked it off his shoulders and dropped it to the ground. "I'll fight all you pieces of s.h.i.+t, let's go go."

Sam was wearing a short-sleeve polo s.h.i.+rt, and maybe if he hadn't worn that one, maybe if he'd worn a loose sweater or work s.h.i.+rt, the kid who'd punched him wouldn't have seen so clearly Sam's deeply muscled chest, his impossibly thick shoulders and upper arms, and he wouldn't have pulled the knife he now waved in front of him, the base of the blade between his thumb and forefinger, the handle in his palm. Like this was something he did all the time, pulled knives on people in fights, people he'd just pulled over in his phony unmarked cruiser.

"Fine," Sam said, "fine. We're going to call this one over, all right?" He could feel his chin bleeding, the liquid itch of it, and he walked backwards to his Duster, the four of them standing there in his headlights. One of them laughed and another stepped closer. The kid's knife blade glinted dully in his hand, and the blue light still flashed, and Sam climbed in behind his wheel and pulled the door shut after him, and Theresa said, "I got their plate number, Sam."

Sam put the Duster in reverse. He rolled his window down and yelled out into the cold air. "Remember this face. You hear me? Remember this "Remember this face. You hear me? Remember this face face."

THE KID with the knife must've had a big ring on his hand; behind the black whiskers of Sam's beard a chunk of flesh was missing from his chin, and somebody-Theresa or Liz-had gotten him a damp paper towel from a bathroom and he was pressing it to the wound. He'd told us their story that way, his hand pressed to his chin in the dim fluorescent light of Vinny's small office. There were droplets of blood on Sam's s.h.i.+rt, and I kept thinking of that kid and his sucker punch and his knife. I pictured my best friend stabbed and bleeding to death down in the avenues, his fiancee no longer his fiancee, and then what would they have done to her? What were they hoping to do with their phony police flasher and their knives?

Vinny had Sam pull the paper towel from his chin. "You're gonna have to get that st.i.tched up, Sam."

Liz and Theresa were already at the door. There were the words hospital hospital and and Let's go, Let's go, but Theresa had given Vinny the license plate number and Sam and I stood in front of Vinny's desk as he called the Haverhill police. Sam had left his jacket back on Cedar Street. He stood there in his s.h.i.+rt, blood drops all down his chest, the damp paper towel at his side, and he was looking into my eyes like we'd both just come to the threshold of something. I nodded; the last few years he'd talked about being big, how that had always kept him from ever having to fight or throw that first punch and he wasn't sure he ever could. but Theresa had given Vinny the license plate number and Sam and I stood in front of Vinny's desk as he called the Haverhill police. Sam had left his jacket back on Cedar Street. He stood there in his s.h.i.+rt, blood drops all down his chest, the damp paper towel at his side, and he was looking into my eyes like we'd both just come to the threshold of something. I nodded; the last few years he'd talked about being big, how that had always kept him from ever having to fight or throw that first punch and he wasn't sure he ever could.

Theresa called from the hallway to hurry up. "Someone needs to look at that, Sam." Vinny was talking to a cop on the phone, but he wasn't telling him about the dummy cruiser or the a.s.sault, just said he needed help running the tag on an illegally parked car on campus; he needed an address. In seconds Vinny was writing it down on a notepad he stuffed into his jacket pocket. He glanced up at Sam and me and we said nothing and left his office and Academy Hall, Theresa and Liz walking ahead of us.

It was a quiet ride down through Bradford Square, the five of us in Sam's Duster. I was in the back with Liz and Theresa, and none of us spoke as Sam drove us down empty South Main Street by the Sacred Hearts church, then under the flas.h.i.+ng yellow traffic light past Village Square Restaurant and Ronnie D's, their windows dark, the vacant lots of McDonald's and Mister Donut and the bank. Now we were crossing the Merrimack, Sam picking up speed, then slowing once we got to the Haverhill side, and that's when he should've turned right for Water Street and Captain Chris's Restaurant, that's when he should've gone on for another half mile to b.u.t.tonwoods and the Hale and the doctor who would st.i.tch him up.

But instead Sam drove straight up Main, and we all stayed quiet. None of us said anything. My heart was a restless old acquaintance in my chest, and I tried to breathe evenly and keep my hands and feet still. There was a new restaurant in Monument Square, a franchise diner called Sambo's. It was close to four in the morning but its parking lot was full, a white halogen haze cast out over all the Pontiacs and Chryslers, Ford pickups and Chevy vans. Sam accelerated past it and its walls of windows. Inside, nearly every booth was filled with men and women from the barrooms and maybe a dance club down in Lawrence or up at the beach. The counter was filled too. One woman sat there in a silver rayon dress, a smoking cigarette between her fingertips. The man beside her was in jeans and a dark sweats.h.i.+rt, his back to the street. At his waist was a biker chain and a Buck knife, and she was laughing at something he must've just said. Then we were on Main, Sam steering left down one of the avenues.

In a low voice Vinny said something to him, a sentence with numbers in it, but it was as if both my ears were pressed to seash.e.l.ls, the cupped silence that becomes the crash of ocean waves, far away and against your skin.

Liz rested her hand against my leg. We were near Primrose and the lumberyard Jeb and Cleary and I used to steal from. Then we were parked in front of a house, a two-story with asphalt siding made to look like brick. There was no light on over the front stoop, none in the windows, and the aluminum storm frame was empty of gla.s.s and hung away from the door and its two dead bolts above a dented k.n.o.b. To the right of the stoop was a rutted dirt alleyway between this house and the next, but there was nothing there but a motorcycle with no rear tire, its axle on a shopping cart on its side.

Let's keep looking.

Vinny may have said it, or Sam, these words the first about what we were actually doing, and now we were driving up and down the avenues, Sam's headlights most of the only light there was. Sometimes there'd be a streetlamp flickering at a corner, or in a window the muted blue of a TV, even this late when there was nothing on, and I pictured a drunk pa.s.sed out on a couch. In a second-story window there glowed an electric Virgin Mary, her robes as bright as a hundred-watt bulb, her palms clasped in prayer. But I didn't want her praying for me or the ones I was beginning to fear we wouldn't find, that they'd get away like all the worst seemed to-like Clay Whelan and Dennis Murphy and Tommy J., like the two men in Boston who did what they did to my sister and left her where she could have frozen to death, and now these young motherf.u.c.kers who had come close to stealing my friend from me, the first person who had seemed to see me as something more than I was.

But these thoughts were not in my head, they were only mute s.p.a.ces of air between heartbeats I was trying to calm with steady breathing. If we didn't find them, what would I do with this nearly gut-sick readiness? Where would it go?

Sam turned right onto Main, the lights of Sambo's ahead in Monument Square. It was an hour before dawn, but as we rode slowly by, the place seemed even more crowded than before, every booth filled now, every counter stool occupied. Beyond the counter, waitresses worked swiftly, pouring coffee, pulling plates of food from the serving shelf to the kitchen where I could see the hurried movement of cooks in white. There was cigarette smoke in the air, a man in a black s.h.i.+rt and thin red tie leaving the bathroom. I looked to my left, past Liz and her friend. In the center of the square, the statue of the Union soldier was a granite silhouette against the fluorescent glare of the gas station on the other side, and I could feel it all begin to back up on me, my arms and legs starting to feel heavy now, Liz's hand a weight on my knee.

Theresa's voice was in the air-That's them. Sam, that's them them. She sounded as if she'd been holding her breath, her words coming out on released air. They're in that first booth. Did you They're in that first booth. Did you see see them? They're right them? They're right there there.

We were steering fast into the lot of Sambo's, Sam pulling into a s.p.a.ce between a pickup and a small sedan. That's their car. That's their car. Under the security light, it was a dull green, like it had been sandblasted and spray-painted that color, and in the backseat a boy and girl were kissing. My body was light again. If my heart had a sound it would be an electronic thumping in the air. I reached for the door handle, but this was a two-door and Vinny wasn't opening his fast enough- Under the security light, it was a dull green, like it had been sandblasted and spray-painted that color, and in the backseat a boy and girl were kissing. My body was light again. If my heart had a sound it would be an electronic thumping in the air. I reached for the door handle, but this was a two-door and Vinny wasn't opening his fast enough-Go, go, go go. Then there was cold air and I was pus.h.i.+ng the seat against Vinny's back, his voice a warning, and I had one leg out the door, my hand squeezing Sam's shoulder; he turned to me, his face as still as a photograph. Just throw that first punch, Just throw that first punch, these words I left behind as I ran across the lot for the gla.s.s doors. I could feel how far ahead of everyone I was, but the doors swung open from their centers and grasping the handles were hands that looked like mine, small hands, and there'd been no weight to those doors, no surface to the rust-colored porcelain tiles of the entryway under my boots, no resistance as I pushed open the final doors, thick commercial gla.s.s on double hinges that swung back and forth behind me. There were the smells of bacon and eggs and coffee, of maple syrup and dried ketchup and cigarette smoke. There were men and women in their party clothes, their barroom clothes, their dance-club clothes, none of them looking up at me as they smoked and sipped and laughed and talked and chewed; all of this made sounds but none of it was understandable, voices without words lost in wind off the ocean that was my head. I was moving to the first booth, had been along. these words I left behind as I ran across the lot for the gla.s.s doors. I could feel how far ahead of everyone I was, but the doors swung open from their centers and grasping the handles were hands that looked like mine, small hands, and there'd been no weight to those doors, no surface to the rust-colored porcelain tiles of the entryway under my boots, no resistance as I pushed open the final doors, thick commercial gla.s.s on double hinges that swung back and forth behind me. There were the smells of bacon and eggs and coffee, of maple syrup and dried ketchup and cigarette smoke. There were men and women in their party clothes, their barroom clothes, their dance-club clothes, none of them looking up at me as they smoked and sipped and laughed and talked and chewed; all of this made sounds but none of it was understandable, voices without words lost in wind off the ocean that was my head. I was moving to the first booth, had been along.

It was a silent, well-lighted island, and it held three men, young I could see now, younger than I was. One of them sat facing the door, the two others across from him, a smear of skin and hair and leather and wool. It was hard to see them clearly, only what was in front of each: a ceramic coffee cup on a white saucer, the cups empty, and now I was standing at their booth, their faces turning slowly my way as words came out of me, friend knife my best friend knife my best friend? My friend? My friend? friend? And the one who sat alone, the one with the stringy black hair whose eyes were on mine, he began to smirk, and I knew it was him who'd pulled the knife, and then his cup was in my hand and I was breaking it across his nose and cheeks and I grabbed the next cup and pushed it into the face of the one at the window, my elbow shooting into the chin of the one closest to me, his head snapping back, and I could see it was a big head on a big body that was trying to stand. There was more movement and noise, human shouts and cries, the one near the window being jerked out of the booth, Vinny's voice, And the one who sat alone, the one with the stringy black hair whose eyes were on mine, he began to smirk, and I knew it was him who'd pulled the knife, and then his cup was in my hand and I was breaking it across his nose and cheeks and I grabbed the next cup and pushed it into the face of the one at the window, my elbow shooting into the chin of the one closest to me, his head snapping back, and I could see it was a big head on a big body that was trying to stand. There was more movement and noise, human shouts and cries, the one near the window being jerked out of the booth, Vinny's voice, Mother Motherf.u.c.ker, and Sam's wide back, then the kid who'd pulled the knife dragged off his bench, and there was the constant thud and jolt of my right hand and shoulder as I kept punching the big one's wincing face, his head not moving enough, his neck thick, a lifter, much bigger than I was, much stronger than I was, and look what I'd started, this is what will kill me, this is who will do it if I stop hitting him, if I ever stop hitting him he'll rise up and beat me to death, but look how he falls to the tiled floor, look how he curls up on his side and covers his face and squirms for the door, look what I'd started, this is what will kill me, this is who will do it if I stop hitting him, if I ever stop hitting him he'll rise up and beat me to death, but look how he falls to the tiled floor, look how he curls up on his side and covers his face and squirms for the door, and I straddle him and keep punching him in the skull, the ear, the temple, his bare hands, his neck. My throat burns from vibration, the wind in my head a sound, and I straddle him and keep punching him in the skull, the ear, the temple, his bare hands, his neck. My throat burns from vibration, the wind in my head a sound, my my sound, the wind shrieking through barbed wire, sound, the wind shrieking through barbed wire, f.u.c.k you, you piece of s.h.i.+t you f.u.c.kin' piece of f.u.c.k you, you piece of s.h.i.+t you f.u.c.kin' piece of s.h.i.+t s.h.i.+t. And I'm standing and kicking him in the head, my work boots doing it, the boots with the steel toes that when it's cold freeze your feet that feel nothing now, and his head keeps bouncing back and rolling forward, bouncing back and rolling forward, but he can still get up and if he does he will kill me, he will kill me, he will kill me.

Liz's face there now, so strange to see it. She is kneeling, her hands in the air, and she looks up at me, her eyes s.h.i.+ning, and words are coming out, but they're lost in mine which don't stop, have never stopped. There is the cry of wind through the wire and now it's her wind but she seems to be whispering, her eyes so s.h.i.+ny, "You're killing him. Stop, you're killing him. Please, stop."

His hands have fallen and no part of him moves. The last kicks have gone under Liz's fingers, but his eyes are closed as if in sleep, his mouth a b.l.o.o.d.y hole in his face, the wind in my legs now, pulling me to Sam's voice.

You pull a knife on me me? You pull a You pull a knife knife?

The kid, the driver, the smirker and sucker puncher, is on his knees and elbows, and Sam's hand is in his hair and he pulls till the kid's face shows, his eyes squeezed shut, and Sam punches it, then pushes it back to the floor, then does it again and again. A m.u.f.fled voice there. "I'm only sixteen. sixteen. I'm only I'm only sixteen sixteen." A wire turning in the wind, my boot toe sinking into his ribs, then off his hip, then into his ribs again, and what are all these people doing here? These seated men and women who stare at us and do not move? At the far end of the counter, there is a flurry of movement, Vinny's dark hair, his arm punching someone I can't see, and the wind pushes me through this painting of a diner of people dressed in red and black and denim, this haze of cigarette smoke, these perfumes and colognes and coffees, and my hand reaches behind the lady in the silver rayon dress, a sound from her as I grab a full ketchup bottle, its neck in my fist, and I'm at the end of the counter and my arm swings the bottle down on it, an explosion of gla.s.s, but Vinny is on the third one now, punching him over and over again, this face with whiskers, a punch-smudged face I hold the broken bottle to, but my hand throws it down and I punch the face Vinny punches, I kick the man's hip, his thigh, his knee, the wind louder than it's ever been, my face burning, and it's the burning that sends me back to Sam and the two others on the floor, Liz kneeling there by the big one who doesn't move, and beyond, in the brighter light of the entryway, a woman at the pay phone is punching in numbers, and Theresa is there too, pressing the hang-up b.u.t.ton, shaking her head at the woman who is smaller and turns and hurries back through the doors into the wind.

Fellas, please, fellas. A cook in white, his short mustache, his pink face. He stands behind the counter of still people, his arms half raised as if in surrender, but this is a sc.r.a.p of paper ripping by in the wind, my work boot kicking again the kid with the knife, and I turn for the big one but he lies there as still as when I left him days ago, Liz standing now, words coming from her mouth, her eyes dry, and my vocal cords are strings about to break, these silent people Vinny walks by, his chest and shoulders rising and falling, and on the floor at the end of the counter, the legs of the other, his pants gray corduroy, his motorcycle boots flat on their sides, his body half behind the counter where there was no protection for him, no movement there or anywhere, just Sam standing in the wind that is my sound that has never stopped, the boy curled at his feet. But there is another sound now, a weeping, a woman's weeping. A cook in white, his short mustache, his pink face. He stands behind the counter of still people, his arms half raised as if in surrender, but this is a sc.r.a.p of paper ripping by in the wind, my work boot kicking again the kid with the knife, and I turn for the big one but he lies there as still as when I left him days ago, Liz standing now, words coming from her mouth, her eyes dry, and my vocal cords are strings about to break, these silent people Vinny walks by, his chest and shoulders rising and falling, and on the floor at the end of the counter, the legs of the other, his pants gray corduroy, his motorcycle boots flat on their sides, his body half behind the counter where there was no protection for him, no movement there or anywhere, just Sam standing in the wind that is my sound that has never stopped, the boy curled at his feet. But there is another sound now, a weeping, a woman's weeping.

She stands in front of the cook holding clasped hands to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her dark hair is streaked with gray. Eyeliner runs down her cheeks. "Please, please, please." She is in a white blouse and black skirt, an ap.r.o.n around her waist and hips, and her legs are in black stockings, her waitress shoes white like Sam's mother's. "Please." She keeps shaking her head, and her lower lip trembles and why is she so scared scared? The question stops everything, the wind dying to nothing, no more sound coming out of me. I want to say something to her, I want to calm her down, but when I step forward she steps back, her hands tight fists against her throat.

Is she afraid afraid of me? How can she be afraid of of me? How can she be afraid of me me?

"Time to go."

Vinny's voice, no others. The only sound is the sizzle of bacon, these men and women watching us from the counter and from the booths, faces I now turn away from. We walk past the kid curled in a ball. We step over the big one who has not moved. Is he gone Is he gone? The girls are outside already. They stand together under the halogen haze of the security lights, their breaths small clouds in the air, and Vinny and Sam and I are pus.h.i.+ng open the first doors, then the second, the restaurant behind us so very crowded, and so very quiet.

WE SHOULD'VE gone straight to Sam's Duster. We should've all climbed in and driven to the hospital for Sam and his chin. We could have gone to Vinny's then for coffee and omelets, the sun rising over the tree line and frozen lake, but instead we took our time out in the parking lot. Maybe Theresa and Liz wanted a cigarette first, or maybe we were waiting for one of those s.h.i.+theads to stagger outside. I felt weak and empty, my knuckles starting to burn. Then two things happened at once: two police cruisers pulled one after the other into the lot, their blue lights flas.h.i.+ng, and like dark ghosts, the three we'd left behind drifted out of Sambo's.

But it couldn't be them, could it? Five minutes ago all three lay on the floor, out, or close to it, especially the big one, and how could he be standing there with his blood-streaked face looking at us in the flas.h.i.+ng blue of real police lights?

There were cops' voices in the air. Vinny stepped over and flashed his Bradford security badge and started telling our story. I was relieved the big one wasn't dead. It was good I hadn't killed him or anyone, but I was also disappointed they were already well enough to be walking, and this weak emptiness in my arms and legs had to go away because Liz said something to the kid who'd pulled the knife and out of his face came, "f.u.c.k you, you f.u.c.kin' c.u.n.t." And Vinny was halfway to him before I even moved, both cops tackling him, and now it was close to sunup and the five of us were at the Haverhill police station waiting for Sam's father.

After our arrests at the beach, it's the one thing he insisted Sam do if he ever got into trouble again: call him. Sam gave his name to the lieutenant on duty and asked if he could use his desk phone. "You the inspector's son? Sure, be my guest. Give him a call." He sat back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. He wasn't the only friendly one. The two cops who arrested Vinny offered us coffee, and one of them kept smiling and shaking his head, "You guys couldn't've picked a better trio to beat on. Believe me, those three are the lowest of the low."

Vinny was in a holding cell, and Theresa and Liz and I were sitting on a long wooden bench. The three cops were behind a half-wall of raised panel, deep scratches along its surface, a gouge in the corner. Sam stood there waiting. The whiskers of his chin were caked with dried blood, and I could see he was nervous about having woken his father for this. Then Mr. Dolan strolled through an office doorway and down the hall, this short Irishman in a hat and coat. He glanced at his son and us, then pushed open the swinging half-door to the police desks and moved easily through the room. He took off his hat and sat down in an oak chair beside a desk.

"Mornin', Sergeant."

"Morning to you, Sam."

Sam's father nodded in the direction of the other two. "Officers."

"Inspector."

"You've got a tough kid here, Sam."

"Oh sure, sure." There was more small talk, a laugh or two, and I could see Sam relax a bit as his father began to make a case for our friend Vinny and how he could lose his job over this and did any of us want that?

In minutes Vinny was out of his cell signing something at the counter. Then the five of us were thanking Mr. Dolan and climbing back into Sam's Duster for the short ride to the hospital. While his chin got st.i.tched, I stood outside with Vinny near the ambulance bay. From the hill of b.u.t.tonwoods Avenue, we could see out over the river flowing east. The sky had lightened above the trees and houses, and across the water the stacks of the boxboard factory churned out smoke the color of ash. I looked farther up the hill to the middle school where from the asphalt playground I used to watch that smoke rise into the air, the school where I saw Russ Bowman chased and beaten by a grown man, and I could feel the soft thud of the big one's head against my boot again and again. Maybe to shake it off, I said, "Good fight."

Vinny lit up a cigarette. He blew smoke out his nose and smiled at me. "Fight? That was a f.u.c.king ambush."

We both laughed, but again there was the feeling I'd just gotten away with something, the cops treating us like rogue colleagues, Mr. D. scolding us not so much for the fight but for letting the police get involved. Vinny was still chuckling under his breath. He looked over at me. "And you you are f.u.c.kin' crazy." are f.u.c.kin' crazy."

I smiled and shrugged and looked back out at the brown river. I had never hit a baseball with a bat in a game people I loved were watching; I didn't know what it felt like to slap a puck into a net or catch a football and run with it into a place called the end zone, but standing in the dawn's early light with Vinny it occurred to me this is what those acts must feel like: earned and glorious and edged with blood.

12.

I WAS ALONE IN Liz's bed. It was late afternoon and winter light lay in a path across the floor. There was laughter out in the hallway, a rich girl's laugh, chest-deep and ironic, and my right s.h.i.+n was sore from the ankle to the knee. I closed my swollen fingers into a fist, then opened them again. My clothes lay on the floor over my work boots, and stuck to the lower legs of my corduroys were bits of gla.s.s in ketchup and blood. WAS ALONE IN Liz's bed. It was late afternoon and winter light lay in a path across the floor. There was laughter out in the hallway, a rich girl's laugh, chest-deep and ironic, and my right s.h.i.+n was sore from the ankle to the knee. I closed my swollen fingers into a fist, then opened them again. My clothes lay on the floor over my work boots, and stuck to the lower legs of my corduroys were bits of gla.s.s in ketchup and blood.

It was eight or nine in the morning when Sam dropped Liz and me off at the campus gate. We'd been up all night. The sky was gray and the air was flat and cold against my skin. It was a Sunday morning, the campus quiet, steam rising from a pipe on the roof of Academy Hall. A car drove slowly down the asphalt lane through the green between the student union and library. It was a European sedan of some kind, silver. Then the rear window rolled down and Pop smiled at me. The car stopped. His father-in-law was behind the wheel, a rich businessman from New York City. He was a handsome man in his fifties or sixties, his hair combed back, and his wife sat beside him, Peggy and Pop in the back. They were going out to breakfast somewhere, and Peggy's father nodded h.e.l.lo and was polite, but he looked like he wanted to get going and why did his son-in-law have to get out of the car to say h.e.l.lo to his son?

Pop may have seen something different about us, or felt it, but he gave Liz a hug and stood there waiting like he knew I had something to tell him. Then it came out of me, Sam and Theresa getting pulled over, the sucker punch, the knife, then the five of us finding them, and now my heart was knocking against my ribs and all over again I was breaking the cup in the kid's face, pus.h.i.+ng it into the other's, elbowing the big one in the chin-I was aware of my voice being louder now, of my steel toe kicking the air, of pointing out to my father the blood and ketchup and bits of gla.s.s on my lower pant legs, of Liz having gone inside Academy Hall. He studied me as I kept talking. His beard was perfectly trimmed as always, and I knew I had a good story for him, one he seemed to be taking in as just that.

"Wow," Pop said. He hugged me, said he wanted to hear more later, then he opened the rear door of his father-in-law's expensive sedan and said, "My boy just beat the s.h.i.+t out of three punks downtown."

The pride in his voice was unmistakable. And isn't that why I'd told him? To get just that back from him? But in the side view mirror I could see his father-in-law's expression-startled, then disapproving, then concerned: What kind of family had his daughter married into anyway? Who were these people?

Then they were gone and I was walking to Academy Hall. What did I care what this capitalist from Manhattan thought of me? My father was proud and even the cops who showed up couldn't be happier about what we did and who we'd done it to.

Only Liz treated me differently. In the days and weeks that followed, she was still affectionate but in a guarded way, as if she'd just discovered I had a serious defect of some kind, and she wasn't sure how much of herself she would allow to get close-not to me-but to it. it.

It was the wrong word, though, because was the wrong word, though, because it it was nothing, a non-s.p.a.ce inside me I moved through without restraints of any kind; I'd learned how to break through that invisible membrane around another's face and head, but now there was no more barrier inside me either. was nothing, a non-s.p.a.ce inside me I moved through without restraints of any kind; I'd learned how to break through that invisible membrane around another's face and head, but now there was no more barrier inside me either. It It was nothing. And Liz knew what I wasn't letting myself think about too much, that without her that night I had come so very close to kicking a man to death, a boy it turned out, a teenager like the other two, kids from the avenues where I'd roamed myself only five years earlier. was nothing. And Liz knew what I wasn't letting myself think about too much, that without her that night I had come so very close to kicking a man to death, a boy it turned out, a teenager like the other two, kids from the avenues where I'd roamed myself only five years earlier.

And there was revenge to think about. I'd knocked out Steve Lynch's teeth and gotten a carload of men at our door the same night. What would come of this one? Now the story was going around campus and Ronnie D's. Somebody started calling us "the Sambo Slayers." It was a kind of fame.

AS THE winter deepened, I began to feel far away from myself, as if I had somehow stumbled into someone else's life. Nothing I did from Sunday to Sat.u.r.day seemed to have anything to do with me.

On the job, after months of work, we were close to finis.h.i.+ng Trevor D.'s three-decker of new condominiums. All the finish carpentry was done, and he'd sent Doug and Jeb on to a new project two towns over while Randy and I stayed behind to paint. Trevor D. didn't want to share his profit with a realtor, so for any tour of his property he would change out of his contractor clothes and wear s.h.i.+ned loafers, ironed khakis, and a collared s.h.i.+rt under a new wool sweater. He'd be clean-shaven and attentive and charming, leading young couples from one room to the next where Randy and I might be on a stepladder rolling a final coat onto the ceiling, or else on our hands and knees brus.h.i.+ng paint in level strokes along a baseboard. They'd walk past us as if we were not there.

I didn't know what Randy thought of that, but it felt like the truth to me: I I was not there. Or anywhere really; for a while, those early years when I began to change my body, and then later in Texas when my eyes were opened to all the cruelty down through the ages, my feet felt planted on a piece of ground with my name on it, or at least part of my name on it, and then this lengthened into a trail I'd followed, but now I was somehow in the brush, standing there surrounded by thorns I seemed to have agitated as if they were bees. was not there. Or anywhere really; for a while, those early years when I began to change my body, and then later in Texas when my eyes were opened to all the cruelty down through the ages, my feet felt planted on a piece of ground with my name on it, or at least part of my name on it, and then this lengthened into a trail I'd followed, but now I was somehow in the brush, standing there surrounded by thorns I seemed to have agitated as if they were bees.

At night, when I wasn't at the gym, I still brewed tea and tried to read Weber and Marx and Engels and all the rest, but their language looked more abstract to me than ever, nearly indecipherable, and worse, irrelevant. What did Weber's "Theory of Bureaucracy" have to do with how in a restaurant or bar now I always sat against a wall with a view of the door? What did it have to do with how unmotivated I felt in the gym? The Golden Gloves compet.i.tion was weeks away, and I still trained hard under Tony Pavone; I still shadowboxed and worked the bags and sparred with whoever was around, but every time I threw a punch in the direction of another fighter's face, I felt myself pull it a bit. I was jabbing less and getting punched more. Pavone would yell, "Set your feet and throw somethin'. Fight. Fight." But it was like someone telling you to kiss your mother and feel excited about it; before, what had kept boxing from feeling like a fight was the absence of rage, but now I feared it would show up uninvited, and I began to wonder why I kept coming back to that dank underground room at all.

LIZ AND I were going to a movie. It was a Sat.u.r.day night, and I had just driven over the Basilere Bridge and up the hill of Main Street past the statue of Hannah Duston. Liz turned to me and asked if we could stop somewhere for a pack of cigarettes. In Monument Square I pulled in front of a convenience store, left the engine and heater running, and went inside.

The floor was dirty with people's slush and mud tracks, the overhead light fluorescent and too bright, and I was waiting my turn at the register when I saw him watching me, smiling as he walked up. He carried a carton of ice cream and a quart of c.o.ke. I had on a sweater and a jacket, but he wore only a T-s.h.i.+rt, green d.i.c.kies work pants, and sneakers. He was taller than I was, lean, and his black goatee made him look sinister until he started talking in that high voice that hadn't changed since he'd told us he was hawny in the mawnin'.